The Scene

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Reggie LeFlore describes his ventures through visual art in mythic proportions. It&rsquo;s a tendency that makes a great deal of sense coming from an aerosol muralist who shares, with delight, that his best work is guided by storytelling. &nbsp;

You may not recognize his name, but if you spend any time in Minneapolis, you certainly recognize his murals. Bright, bold colors; lavish stenciled faces; raised fists and charming rattle cans &mdash; all signed with his tag (and IG handle) <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ral86/" target="_blank">RAL86</a>. LeFlore delineates his inclination for portraiture as ultimately an adoration and reverence for peoples&rsquo; stories. In the endeavor of painting his subjects, he takes on learning them first, creating alongside them. &ldquo;Really, collaboration did nothing but to amplify this love for portrait work,&rdquo; he explains. &ldquo;Because now I can tell you in as many details as you&#39;d like what you want to know about them. Where they came from, who they are now&hellip;&rdquo; &nbsp;

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, LeFlore paints a picture of his childhood by way of the media he consumed. &ldquo;I was listening to rock, hip hop, trance, breakbeats, drum and bass, and I also read and watched a ton of comic books, cartoons, anime, and mangas,&rdquo; he says, sharing a laundry list of genres and outlets. But of all his influences, it was the public and visual expressions of art throughout hip-hop culture that stuck. &ldquo;Street art specifically. It wasn&#39;t present as much in Nebraska, but it was all over&nbsp;music videos on TV&rdquo;. &nbsp;

As the culture peaked, so too did LeFlore&rsquo;s interest. It was after he graduated from Benson High School in 2004 that he began pursuing a degree in Media Arts, writing his own stories and developing characters along the way. While his original intrigue in illustration and cartooning eventually waned, an illustrative technique and style still perseveres in his work. Explaining his approach, he says, &ldquo;I was carrying over vectors and vexel techniques from graphic design to be able to make tonal values for my stencils. Which helped me&nbsp;approach&nbsp;[spray painting] with a technical lens.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Of course, inundated in the history of hip-hop was the need to make one&rsquo;s self, one&rsquo;s story, and one&rsquo;s name known. Graffiti artists of the day did so on any surface necessary. LeFlore credits these visual pioneers for sparking his love for the art form and lauds them by name. &nbsp;

&ldquo;Cornbread, the dudes from Tats Cru, T-Kid&hellip; It was crazy. Seeing what these people were able to do with very limited resources. That&#39;s what got me into it&hellip; One of the most profound things I&#39;ve learned about public and street art is that it&rsquo;s a vessel to improve people&#39;s daily lives... Blank wall spaces, deteriorating buildings. Painting enters those public spaces.&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIwMjMwMDAx/full.jpg" />The Afrocentric Spectrum, mural along University Avenue in Saint Paul. Photo courtesy of the artist&#39;s website.

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After making his way to Minneapolis in 2016, LeFlore recounts taking on the Made Here, a project&nbsp;by Hennepin Theatre Trust, in which artists filled up downtown storefront windows with their creations. Whether subconscious or intentional, Made Here was the perfect vehicle for LeFlore to put his influence from street art and graffiti&nbsp;into practice. &ldquo;Lots of buildings weren&rsquo;t at capacity, so our art was a way to activate that space.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Today, LeFlore&rsquo;s work takes on exponentially larger canvases. He goes into detail about having just completed a colossal multi-story public mural powered by Hennepin Theatre&nbsp;Trust and The X Games along First Avenue downtown. The work itself depicts the combined portraits of five young skaters. They gaze up in all directions, effervescent in their color&nbsp;scheme. The city&rsquo;s skyline traces behind them. &nbsp;

Though as with any project of this proportion, it wasn&rsquo;t without its tribulations. &ldquo;There were challenges in the beginning with the timeline and trying to take on an image of this magnitude in just a few months,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Your work can get lost if you don&#39;t have any special sense of direction. Storytelling gives it that direction, and people help with that story&hellip; There were connections we needed to make to be able to feel comfortable depicting kids in the Twin Cities.&rdquo; It wasn&rsquo;t until connecting with the local skate&nbsp;shop 3rd Lair and having a chance to sit down with owner Mark Rodriguez and&nbsp;some of their most dedicated skaters that the mural&rsquo;s imagery really came into focus. &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMyMTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Mengistu, one of LeFlore&#39;s collaborators from&nbsp;3rd Lair Skatepark &amp; Skateshop, celebrates the mural&#39;s completion at the X Games Mural Celebration this past August. Photo courtesy of Hennepin Theatre Trust.

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Dale Stark, Manager of Public Relations at Hennepin Theatre Trust echoes the necessity for and presence of utter intention behind LeFlore&rsquo;s multi-story work, comparing it to developing theater productions. &ldquo;Picking an artist, picking a theme, it all clicks when you start to see the likeness [murals] have to any show. It&rsquo;s always more than just color on a backdrop. That&rsquo;s what got me excited about it.&rdquo; &nbsp;

&ldquo;It was really about a way that we could show the positivity of young skaters of color,&rdquo; Stark continues. &ldquo;They&rsquo;re the future, the next generation of leaders, our future voices. We wanted to honor the impact that these youth have on downtown&hellip; With construction and the pandemic, the city&rsquo;s center was a ghost town. Now, with people returning, we hope that they return with a new perspective and realization that downtown&rdquo; &mdash; much like the city itself &mdash; &ldquo;is simply not what it used to be.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Even outside of the vastness of LeFlore&rsquo;s downtown skate mural, it&rsquo;s clear that the artist has a propensity for projects that span space and time. Just this past summer LeFlore was selected by the City of Bloomington and the Ua Si Creative to collaborate on the creation of one of Minnesota&rsquo;s longest murals. The 750-foot-long&nbsp;work envisions the South Loop of Bloomington&rsquo;s <a href="https://www.bloomingtonmn.gov/pl/news/one-longest-murals-minnesota-coming-south-loop-2021-07-06" target="_blank">&ldquo;past, present, and future,&rdquo;</a> featuring art by LeFlore, Marlena Myles, Martzia Thometz, Xee Reiter, Andr&eacute;s Guzm&aacute;n, and Tom Jay and Thomasina Topbear of&nbsp;the City Mischief Murals collective.

As he continues his practice, Reggie anticipates a hunkering down on public art informed by narrative. He speaks with a concentrated giddiness about a mural-based graphic novel that could one day sprawl across the city&rsquo;s public spaces. With characters in development and a storyline inspired by his long-standing love for comic books, it&rsquo;s an epic worth watching vacant walls for.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM2MDgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Self-portrait from the artist&#39;s recent solo exhibition, Laying the Groundwork, at Gamut Gallery May-June 2021. Image courtesy of the artist&#39;s website.

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To see more of LeFlore&#39;s work, check out <a href="http://ral86.com" target="_blank">his website</a> or <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ral86/" target="_blank">follow him on Instagram</a>. His mural for Hennepin Theatre Trust is located at 714 1st Ave N, across from First Avenue. The Ua Si Creative mural is located on 30th Ave S between Lindau and American Blvd.&nbsp;in Bloomington.

For more on Hennepin Theatre Trust, visit <a href="https://hennepintheatretrust.org" target="_blank">their website</a> or follow them on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/hennepintheatretrust/" target="_blank">Instagram</a>.

Banner image: LeFlore&#39;s X Games mural on 1st Ave. Photo courtesy of Hennepin Theatre Trust.

Fresh off two gigantic murals in Minneapolis and Bloomington, the artist reflects on the power of people, color, and what a wall can mean to a city

Reggie LeFlore Never Paints Alone (Even When He Does)

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On what seemed to be another impossibly warm summer day, I was welcomed into the conference room of the Minnesota Museum of American Art (The M). A handful of ladies &mdash; and what were made out to be their friends and children &mdash; reclined around a hollow rectangle of tables and chairs. Hastily labeled white takeout containers laid strewn across the table tops in satisfied completion, red and white picnic pattern wax paper sticking its tongue out of the sides. The attendees, most notably the members of the Rondo-based Hallie Q. Brown Community Center (HQB) senior women&rsquo;s group, donned pastel blouses and caps. I met them cackling and smiling at a short documentary projected onto the wall. The video, it turns out, was of themselves. Particularly, its purpose was to enumerate how the artists at present arrived to this moment of celebratory relaxation. It was about their journey in, through, to, and over art.

Aptly named The Magnificent Golden Agers, this group of women gathered to celebrate the completion of literary and visual arts projects spanning the past year&nbsp;&mdash; pandemic included.

The teachers of this group of magnificent agers, Nicole M. Smith and Lawrence El Grecco Waddell, take turns admitting that they learned far more from these women than could ever be taught. They delve into the project&#39;s inspiring texts and materials, one of them being&nbsp;A Choice of Weapons by Minnesota photographer&nbsp;Gordon Parks. Smith tells me, &ldquo;As the pandemic came on, of course we had to shift gears&hellip; We sent every member an art kit equipped with portable DVDs, books, cameras, journals, etc... It just had to be interdisciplinary&hellip; Because that&rsquo;s what art can look like. That&rsquo;s what art is.&rdquo; &nbsp;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5ODkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Gloria Massey,&nbsp;Black and Proud, mixed media, 2020.

Smith and Waddell recount some early reluctance by the ladies to think of themselves as artists. For Smith, the task of convincing these women of their artistry stems from her own negotiations with what it means to be one.

&ldquo;Being a vision-impaired artist, there is this synchronicity that has come into my being, a relatability with those that are deemed marginalized or &#39;throw aways&#39;&nbsp;by society. So it gives me a deep purpose and fuel to do work in this way with my community. Like yo, let&rsquo;s love us up!&rdquo;

It was abundantly clear to me at the unveiling event of their newest exhibition of collages, Wise, Gifted, and Black, that the stories tossed across the tables in The M&rsquo;s community room were the result of an arrival at some creative epiphany. &nbsp;

One Golden Ager, by the name of Shirley Barber, reflected when asked what she&rsquo;d learned.&nbsp;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve learned to pay attention to the little details. The trees outside, the leaves on them, blowing. But how often do you think about what makes them move? How often do we consider the wind?&rdquo; &nbsp;

She takes her time with the words &mdash;&nbsp;as though relaying a live account of her imagination in that moment &mdash;&nbsp;and they swell with lyricism. &ldquo;I pay attention more to life. The clouds, for instance. I look at it [all] in a different way&hellip; The unseen forces of life, the kind artists tend to and keep close.&rdquo;

Eventually, the group makes its way out into the sauntering breeze of Barber&rsquo;s words on the downtown streets of St.&nbsp;Paul. We turn the corner to see for ourselves the culmination of visual works by Ruth Wilson, Gloria Massey, Shirley Barber, Janette Gray, and Bettye Jackson.

In front of her collage, Gloria Massey shares that she&rsquo;s a lifelong member of the HQB and the Rondo neighborhood. Though she didn&rsquo;t always think of herself as an artist, Massey has &ldquo;so many memories of art.&rdquo; Most of which came from her time at community centers as a child. In fact, she only really left Rondo once to try her hand at creating a life in Milwaukee, but admittedly, Ms. Massey shares, &ldquo;Home is home.&rdquo; She adds that it&rsquo;s actually the anniversary of her return to Rondo &mdash; it&rsquo;s been 47 years since that day. Titled Black and Proud, Massey&rsquo;s work lines up the gazes of iconic Black figures with the viewer&rsquo;s. Quotes are reconsidered in marker, pencil, and text, reinvigorated as they sit near the grins and gazes of the &ldquo;greats.&rdquo; Massey&rsquo;s collage reads boisterous and meticulous. Words pulled from articles and profiles emerge as stepping stones around the collage&rsquo;s paperscape, &ldquo;Ancestors&hellip;Mahalia&hellip;Black Mayor&hellip;. Ella.&rdquo;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5ODUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Bettye Jackson,&nbsp;Untitled, mixed media, 2020.

Bettye Jackson, on the other hand, remembers with some sweetness that she never intended to make a home out of Rondo. &ldquo;I came to not stay&hellip; I came up [here] from Arkansas to babysit my sister&#39;s daughter,&rdquo; she tells me. &ldquo;That was in 1960.&rdquo;

When I ask about creativity in her life, Jackson recalls art in all of her most durable routines. &ldquo;Actually, I would paint for fun sometimes&hellip; and I used to love to cook. Truthfully, cooking is like art.&rdquo;

With pride, she shares the memory of the first cake she made, along with the quintessential fact that it was baked using a wood-burning stove. These sweets of yore were feats accomplished at the helm of apprenticeship, Jackson explains. &ldquo;My mother would tell me &lsquo;Clean your dirty clothes off, sit in the chair, and watch me&rsquo;... There was no measuring cup in those days, just a coffee cup. So yeah, that took some skill.&rdquo;

Jackson goes on to list the names of her favored desserts: apple stack cakes, cream-filled caramel cakes, and coconut-layered cakes. The room stirs with aroma at the spell of each recipe. In a beautiful sort of correspondence, Bettye Jackson&rsquo;s collage is simple and evocative with a background the hue of plush saffron. Within the visual work, sweating cooks contemplate a meal while cut-outs of produce and steaming dishes float ephemerally as their frame.

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNjIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Janette Gray, Ancestors: Past, Present, &amp; Future, mixed media, 2020.

The women of Hallie Q. Brown&rsquo;s Magnificent Golden Agers may have started from many a geographic place &mdash; citing cities&nbsp;from North to South &mdash; but what becomes clear to me is the significance of where they are now. In the neighborhood of Rondo, U.S.A. Were I not taken back to stories of my own grandmother&rsquo;s childhood in Rondo, I would still feel at home and at joy with these women.&nbsp;

I retrace in Gloria&rsquo;s words&nbsp;the map of my own great grandfather&#39;s barber shop that existed mythically somewhere on Selby Street. It was named The Head Hunters after their family, the Hunters, in a&nbsp;dousing of wit that prances through all the conversations I still have with my grandmother today.

I think about the serendipity of Wise, Gifted and Black being held at The M, an institution I was first introduced to in the summer of 2020 on a panel.&nbsp;I took my opportunities then&nbsp;to speak and spent them on abolition. I think about how my grandparents guided me through these tenets, whether they were conscious of it or not, by always putting community first.

Lastly, I think back to the personally foundational abolitionist poem by Junauda Petrus, conveniently titled, &quot;<a href="https://vimeo.com/426276718" target="_blank">Give the Police Departments to the Grandmothers</a>.&quot; I think about the fact that indeed, these are the grandmas, friends, and lovers. That they&rsquo;re here now, fashioning fiction, remembrance, and beauty for anyone to see. Because even in impossible weather, The Golden Agers ensure that whenever art is the task, storytelling and community are, too, crafted. Magnificently.&nbsp;&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5ODYwMDAx/full.jpg" />

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Top: Installation view at the reception in June. Bottom: The artists themselves, left to right: Shirley Barber,&nbsp;Bettye Jackson, Nicole M. Smith (in front),&nbsp;Janette Gray, Gloria Massey,&nbsp;and Lawrence El Grecco Waddell.

Wise, Gifted, and Black will be on view at The M through July 17th. The show is installed in their window display at 350 Robert St. N in Saint Paul. For more info, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://mmaa.org/wisegiftedandblack/">https://mmaa.org/wisegiftedandblack/</a>

Special thanks to Nancy Ariza, The M&#39;s&nbsp;Associate Curator of Learning and Engagement.

Banner image: From the Magnificent Golden Agers&#39; 2019 event at The M. Left to right:&nbsp;Gloria Massey, Bettye Jackson, Shirley Barber (above), Janette Gray, and Ruth Wilson.&nbsp;Images courtesy of The M.

Now on view in The M's window display, the show of collages celebrates Black history, Black culture, and the power of making art

Wise, Gifted, and Black:  A Group of Women Forge Community and Artistry in the Heart of Rondo

Hungry For After, the recent exhibition of MFA thesis work at UMN&rsquo;s Katherine E. Nash Gallery, first greets viewers with a legion of ghosts. The black matte words of the show&rsquo;s title sit against a somehow even blacker-backing. The hunger, then, veiled and laying in wait. Each artist&rsquo;s dispatch stands discrete from their classmates, tied by what emerges subtly as their communication with the very hunger of its name. Throughout the gallery, restfulness waits behind orange curtains, archive ripples through the digital, forms lose and find their way. Apparitions, hospitable as they seem, meander an endless journey. The entirety of Hungry For After grasps across mediums the syntax of what it means to want.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5ODMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Caitlin Skaalrud, foreground:&nbsp;the me behind the closed door, installation, 2021. On wall:&nbsp;A and B, digital comic, 2021.

The welcoming ghosts &mdash; fashioned delicately in paper skins &ndash; stand only by the points of material that graze the floor beneath. Part of an installation by Caitlin Skaalrud, the specters begin sparsely, coalescing in population at the foot of an artist&rsquo;s drawing table, painted entirely white. Above it, the largest of them floats in front of a long graphic narrative comic strip mounted on the wall. Their words traverse through memory, liminality, and belonging. Whether the ghosts, delicate and revered, have found their home or are still in search of it remains to be seen. What&rsquo;s important perhaps, is the journey &mdash; &nbsp;one that&rsquo;s ornate and ethereal. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxOTAwMDAx/full.jpg" />Nicholas Bauch, System for Embodying Landscape: Twin Cities, mixed media&nbsp;installation and performance, 2018-2021.

Meandering the bending walls of the Nash Gallery, your eyes settle on the warmth of tangerine curtains sheathing a thin, sleek camping chair. On the floor beside it, an open suitcase carries only thick, academic books. The semi-room created by Nicholas Bauch fills with air; glass shelves carry glass jars of sand and other collectibles, sitting below arid landscapes. &ldquo;DWELL&gt;MOVE&rdquo; assigns the space, placing the collections of prints and items in stillness. In the corner of one photograph, against a perfectly blue sky, a gallon of water teeters down. No water falls from it. In the spirit of the hierarchy of those words that name the space, a print and its halves &mdash; taking up nearly an entire wall &mdash; is dizzying at first glance. Bauch&rsquo;s ecology of branches and their counterparts weave into one another and collapse infinitely downward. The image nearly vibrates, insular and bustling with wood, dirt, and the unintelligible in betweens. In the center of the room sits a cassette deck and some tapes. There&rsquo;s an ask, subversive in a year of society-wide hand sanitizing, for you to pop in the tapes and have a listen. Next to it, another touchable item which reads with comfort and few words. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5OTcwMDAy/full.jpg" />R.C. Tibbott;&nbsp;Gestures of Pressure and Time; ceramics, paper, metal, found objects; 2021

What follows in the next gallery space is a chorus of seriality from R.C. Tibbot. Tactile military issue boots flop and stand at attention alongside over 100 delicately propped ceramic bases of what could have been vases or bowls. Each base has been destroyed, cut short in faintly different manners. The crowd of possibilities they create grids neatly on a giant square of white floor. The boots are worn, dilapidated almost; the square, quiet and demanding. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIxOTgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Grant McFarland,&nbsp;Cash and Carry (detail), 2021, installation view

Perhaps in the same neighborhood of thought, Grant McFarland takes inventory of the necessary. &ldquo;BED / SPOON / SHIRT / PLAYING CARDS / STOOL / BUTTER.&rdquo; All the named items&nbsp;scatter themselves throughout the room, single twins to separate items that are clearly elsewhere: an empty clothes hanger, a spoon-shaped cut-out in wood. Butter, nearly a pound, sits chilling behind the door of a tinted fridge &mdash; dated and named by its form and birth. The lives of each item read first as simple. After all, their existences trace our own daily needs. In this space however, it is the pedestrian, clean fabrications that beg the question of how they came to be thought of in the ways that we do. To be found anywhere, any way, an item&rsquo;s significance transforms with its production. McFarland remarries intimacy with utility. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM1ODcwMDAx/full.jpg" />Sayge Carroll;&nbsp;Other Worlds; installation with projection and sound, ceramic, canvas, leather, muslin, paper, found objects, rock, wood, latex paint; 2021

A memory book of vinyl album covers bursts verdant across the transitional wall: forgotten classics from Nina Simone, Lou Rawls, Harry Belafonte. At the center of an altar is a community of clay, what looks to be a mammoth oven. Hides, drums, pebbles, and rocks all take rest alongside one another. Mahogany and cyan glazes commune. It&rsquo;s a meeting space, perhaps. One chair is present, its own instrument sitting loyal at right. Suspended above, a camera moves through a land that reveals itself to be committed to neither 3D nor 2D construction. The makings of an archive, if not pure imagination, fall into place. The land on and in screen is traversed easily, a river and brush is the guide. What felt like phantasmal onlookers were passed and nature would resume. On second encounter, the apparitions swell with features and belonging &mdash; a pair stands in stoic joy, wedding dress and tuxedo. A boy in a thin-brimmed hat and cream blouse floats in contrapposto. Neither at the point of imagination nor archive but somewhere in between &mdash; Sayge Carroll&rsquo;s Other World fashions just that. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxODkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Brandon Chambers,&nbsp;(L-R:) Your Pods and Mine #1-2, alcohol ink on Yupo paper;&nbsp;Network, alcohol ink on Yupo paper;&nbsp;Spirit of the Time, ceramic, 2021

Brandon Chambers makes sultry out of the formulaic with explorations of structure. Inks come to life in their folly, squares bloom into spores. Stretching across the wall, Chambers&rsquo;s work spills and returns to itself by way of earthly colors &mdash; light velvet reds and rust-born oranges &mdash; bridged by inevitable blacks, to mustards and seafoam. An egalitarian assessment of hue whose result is numbing and undoubtedly alive. Sitting across is a haunting of ceramic forms, geometric and organic at the same time. All perhaps descendants of a scaffolded cube, the boxes bow and sway like the bones of wrecked houses. Some are assured while others melt. They all line up at shoulder height for display, even assessment. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQxODgwMDAx/full.jpg" />Rini Keagy;&nbsp;Pacaya y Tikal;&nbsp;installation with digital and screen prints on mulberry paper, sand, silica, pebbles, brick;&nbsp;2021

Further down the wall to blacker backings, Rini Keagy embraces dust. A mound of it calls to mind sandstone and piles up to a point below prints that fade and emerge at once. Triumphant architectures materialize at point perspective. Figures the color and mood of blueprints stare in suit and blouse. Keagy&rsquo;s world maps dream-like within El Cenote, the 2-channel video that spans a cavernous pit of black walls. A culmination of archival video, document, and sound, El Cenote levitates over impossible natural forms, cenotes plunging into themselves as the same temple-pyramids of their prints waft across the work. Letters and resolutions flutter into being, and darkness &mdash; what might be read as emptiness &mdash; is all that remains.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎

<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/hungry-for-after-umn-mfa-thesis-exhibition" target="_blank">Hungry For After</a>&nbsp;was on view at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota from April 27 - May 14, 2021. You can view <a href="https://cla.umn.edu/art/galleries/katherine-e-nash-gallery" target="_blank">a video walkthrough of the exhibition here</a>.

Banner image: Rini Keagy,&nbsp;El Cenote, 2-channel video, 00:08:30, 2021. All photos by the author or MPLSART.

Open only by appointment last month, the exhibition of seven MFA grads touched on objects, histories, and emotions just out of grasp

After 'Hungry For After': 2021 MFA Thesis Work at UMN's Katherine E. Nash Gallery

MPLSART Sketchbook Project

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To 22-year-old artist and musician Papa Mbye, drawing is a long-held practice of memory. Born in The Gambia, Mbye describes his arrival to the States and his arrival to the passion of art-making in terms of luck. His parents arrived in the U.S. shortly after winning the lottery&nbsp;&mdash; the green card lottery, specifically.

Reflecting on those first few years and what inspired him to pursue the arts, Mbye remembers back to Memphis, Tennessee,&nbsp;when his mom, in an effort to soothe her son, would make etchings of abstracted birds on paper.

The family moved to Minneapolis when Mbye&nbsp;was four, and a few years later, his&nbsp;dream was to&nbsp;be&nbsp;an illustrator.&nbsp;&quot;Making cartoons, going ham on school projects&hellip; I didn&rsquo;t see Black characters, so I&rsquo;d make them,&quot;&nbsp;he tells me.

Since then, Mbye describes his practice of drawing as being rooted in repetition, something like that of the birds on Memphis paper.

&quot;I&rsquo;d find something that I like and keep doing it to get it right. There&rsquo;s certain characters that I can&rsquo;t stop drawing,&quot;&nbsp;he says. One in particular, with&nbsp;a gaping smile and only a few cartoon follicles,&nbsp;has developed as a kind of&nbsp;iconography&nbsp;within Mbye&rsquo;s work.

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Mbye notes that the character is one he can&rsquo;t shake, that he keeps returning to, although his relationship with the figure is by no means confining. &quot;He&rsquo;s a true translation for how I&rsquo;m feeling at any given time... It&rsquo;s easy to distort him&hellip; a blank slate of a figure.&quot;&nbsp;Mbye&#39;s&nbsp;visual work feels&nbsp;like a conversation between the artist and the images that surface. Vignettes of colored pencil marks fashion themselves like words, ones that don&rsquo;t always make their way off the edges of his sketchbooks.

&quot;I was figuring out how to translate what I felt in a language that felt true and fluent. I&rsquo;ve always had problems with words and interacting in an &lsquo;orthodox&rsquo; manner. I could talk to the drawing and then talk to people through it.&quot;

When I ask him what&rsquo;s next for his practice, Mbye turns to the necessity of trusting&nbsp;one&rsquo;s self&nbsp;in the time of creation. A trust that he&rsquo;s building across media, with <a href="https://open.spotify.com/artist/5JVtTuCBPvUOTZ2YjrAPTp?si=h3qkmXetQBOPuxhpKDaAkg" target="_blank">several musical singles out</a> and an upcoming project he describes&nbsp;giddily&nbsp;as &quot;an overlapping body of work.&quot;

Drawing and music, he says, &quot;intersect in that I tried both traditionally, but that&rsquo;s never really been an option. I know that they&rsquo;re for me because I can be nothing but myself... How ideas develop in both [music and drawing] take parallel paths, in terms of timing. I might start a demo spur-of-the-moment, then return to refine it, giving it skin and blood and flesh and then I clothe it and ship it off.&quot;

Mbye makes sure to say that the task of trust isn&rsquo;t easy, or even concrete. &quot;It could be acceptance of myself, not holding back.&quot; But trust, he makes clear, is something worthy of practice, necessary for evolution.&nbsp;<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); background-color:rgb(250, 250, 250); caret-color:rgb(237, 22, 144); color:rgb(237, 22, 144); font-family:roboto,helvetica,arial,sans-serif; font-size:15.75px; letter-spacing:0.1686825007200241px">◼︎&nbsp;

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To see the artist&#39;s work and hear his music, check out his page on <a href="http://againstgiants.com/portfolio/papa-mbye/" target="_blank">Against Giants </a>and follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/papayoungvision/" target="_blank">@papayoungvision</a>&nbsp;and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/papambye_/" target="_blank">@papambye_</a>.&nbsp;

All images courtesy of the artist.

A profile of the visual artist and musician, who was a participant in the 2020 MPLSART Sketchbook Project

Papa Mbye: Drawing is an act of trust

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No matter the climate, one of the most common threads to be found among the many paintings of Flahn Manly is warmth. Through largely representational works, Flahn transforms how viewers interpret Black life, electrifying forms and faces with shine and depth. And upon learning more about what it is that leads him through his art-making process, Flahn&rsquo;s decisions around warmth make more and more sense. He discusses a campaign he completed on Black nobility, focusing on the humility that the discipline of painting requires of him.

&ldquo;One of the challenges I find is dealing with resistance in getting started. [Sometimes] it&rsquo;s not what&rsquo;s coming through, it&rsquo;s about getting into the canvas. Eventually I surrender. And sometimes something will come through me and what emerges is a completely different piece&hellip; Ego will say you want to be in control of the work, rather than letting it work through you.&quot;

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Though he doesn&rsquo;t say it outright, it is this same &ldquo;surrender&rdquo; Flahn describes that is perhaps a lesson in nobility itself.

Born in Liberia, Flahn moved to Minnesota in 1998.&nbsp;&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been an artist since childhood,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;Art was the way Flahn learned to express himself. &ldquo;And now, it&rsquo;s my life.&rdquo; &nbsp;

As the child of immigrants, he says, the occupational industry of art-making wasn&rsquo;t always an option in his home. &ldquo;It was a no no.&quot; But as he moved through high school, he found artistry to be his saving grace.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s how I learned. I loved science, I loved history, language. I was also always kinesthetic, always hands-on&hellip; Drawing and painting were ways for me to have all of those things&rdquo;. &nbsp;

Now, splitting his time between Connecticut and Minneapolis, Flahn is focusing on paying the solace that he found forward. Having run a pilot program with the Boys and Girls Club to have kids come to the studio and paint with him, Flahn tells me, &ldquo;If art could save my life, how many others could I help?&rdquo;&nbsp;&diams;

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<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NzYwMDAy/full.jpg" />All images courtesy of the artist.&nbsp;To see more of the artist&#39;s work, follow him on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/flahn.art/" target="_blank">@flahn.art</a>.&nbsp;

A participant in our 2020 Sketchbook Project, the painter reflects on the power of art in his life.

Sketchbook Artist Profile: Inside The Vibrant Representational Work of Flahn Manly

MPLSART

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Unlike many of us who &mdash; perhaps by birth, marriage, or employment &mdash; came to live in the frigid plains of the Midwest, interdisciplinary artist and MCAD MFA graduate Roshan Ganu shares that she came here for the polar vortex. Not in spite of it. What&rsquo;s more, it&rsquo;s these thoughts on the insulation and reflection &mdash; literal and otherwise &mdash; ushered in by winter that frame both the monumental and miniature life and work of Roshan Ganu.

&ldquo;I love the winter,&rdquo; says Ganu proudly. &ldquo;For one, it always teaches me something new. There&rsquo;s something about the fresh snow, especially how it looks at night. The reflectivities&hellip; The way that any trace of light bounces off of it and brightens the street.&rdquo;

Looking back to just last year, during an artist residency that she undertook in rural Minnesota, Ganu recalls, &ldquo;There were times that you couldn&rsquo;t tell where the earth had ended and the sky began.&rdquo;

With a collection of work that scales the sides of buildings and captures entire sentiments in a stretch of cotton-sheathed streetlight, it&rsquo;s no surprise that someone of Ganu&rsquo;s imagination would come to such mythical epiphanies about a season that even the most veteran Minnesotans might come to resent every now and again.

Ganu&rsquo;s sculptural installations play with scale &mdash; some larger than life, others shrunk way down and incorporated into animations. Her&nbsp;love of cartooning lends the work a playful sense of humor, even as she&#39;s investigating very real themes of identity, immigration, and isolation.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjIzNTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />A recurring character in Ganu&#39;s work is Chappal, an animated cartoon slipper commonly worn in India, who has adventures here in Minnesota. Screenshot from 2-part video series made in conjunction with the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Thinking again about her time in the snowy, rural flatlands, Ganu remembers the isolation as what led her to internal reflection. When asked what being an artist means to her, Ganu admits she never thought that she was one. The idea of art was always outlined with rigidity.

&ldquo;It was always the Renaissance, the pristine human figure. That&rsquo;s not what my work is.&rdquo;

Growing up in the Indian state of&nbsp;Goa&nbsp;with her mother&nbsp;&mdash;a linguist&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;and her grandmother, who was a painter until the birth of her children, Ganu saw the work of her grandmother to still be art, albeit within the home: a love that often took the form of embroidery and crafts she made for her family. Art as service.

&ldquo;I saw art to be the act of creating a home, beautifying it,&quot; she says.&nbsp;&quot;Growing up with that idea of building home has really stuck with me.&quot;

Equally important for Ganu is the telling of a story. With an undergraduate degree in Journalism and a master&rsquo;s in French and Linguistics, Ganu shares that in her miniature works, &ldquo;It starts with a story &mdash; pulling from personal history &mdash; then juxtaposing it with a seemingly incontextual, &lsquo;I am here&rsquo;... Appropriating the space around me to create a sense of familiarity, always meeting the space halfway&rdquo;.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI5NjUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Screenshot of East 25th Street, Minneapolis; papier-m&acirc;ch&eacute;&nbsp;&amp; mixed media animation; 2019.

Works like that of East 25th Street, Minneapolis operate as ample illustration. Moments become worlds within the sculpture&rsquo;s 24 x 10&rdquo; frame, and worlds become moments. Ganu describes East 25th as an experience in and of itself &ndash; a multi-media installation captured <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G90BYrqdi4c" target="_blank">in this video performance</a> &ndash; laden with texture, scents, simmering lights, and even the sounds of her own voice.

&ldquo;I remember people coming out of it emotional, so I thought it&rsquo;s not just the size, it&rsquo;s the sensorial experience. My voice, the visual, the smell. If that&rsquo;s possible at this scale, what happens when I scale up? Will it hold?&rdquo;

Even her relatively large pieces, like The Banyan Tree standing at 6 feet tall, are still bound between the real and the fictional. And as is Ganu&rsquo;s artistic mandate, &ldquo;Wonder and amusement are kept at the center.&rdquo;

Her art, like that of many artists, starts inward. &ldquo;I view it as a strength that I am extremely vulnerable in my process. And it drives my process and dictates the final thing. Even after the thing is over, the living decisions are still translations of my feelings, that vulnerability.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s an illustration of the human condition &mdash; that if she is tender and puts that into the world for others to see and consume, then naturally there must be some universality to that vulnerability. For Ganu, that too is play.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NjkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Ganu&#39;s stage set for her upcoming collaboration with Ritika Ganguly&nbsp;at the Minnesota Opera, part of their MNiatures series: 8-10 minute collaborative&nbsp;operas pairing artists from different creative&nbsp;practices.

With projects on the way with the Minnesota&nbsp;Opera, the Artistry in Bloomington, and a solo show at the Duluth Art Institute, Ganu has no shortage of space for more worlds of miniature size and more tenderness. If she has to take a break, however, walking is her activity of choice.

&ldquo;I love walking,&quot; she says.&nbsp;&quot;Cities, towns, villages. It gives me a sense of place. I&rsquo;m doing that in my work, as well. This could be the research. And each city has such a discrete street language. Stickers, graffiti tags as mapping sources. I google and go from there. Investigating, mapping. When random people tell me about their day. The image of a cat drawn on a footpath.&rdquo;

Ganu makes clear that excitement drives her even in a packed schedule. That in light of the ways that the pandemic has forced her work to become virtual, it&rsquo;s also becoming giant. She&rsquo;s finding solace in a winter like no other &mdash; and rightfully so. Because when you work with concepts as huge and as utterly personal as Ganu does, you can find&nbsp;joy&nbsp;even&nbsp;from&nbsp;being in flux, comfortably. &nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NjgwMDAx/full.jpg" />The artist in her studio.&nbsp;

To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://www.roshanganu.com" target="_blank">roshanganu.com</a>, or follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/blingalingthoughts/" target="_blank">@blingalingthoughts</a>. All photos courtesy of the artist.

Ganu&#39;s&nbsp;collaboration&nbsp;with Ritika Ganguly&nbsp;and&nbsp;the Minnesota Opera, titled Xylem, premieres Friday, February 12th at <a href="https://mnopera.org/mniatures-tiny-operas-big-ideas/" target="_blank">mnopera.org</a>. The <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/unfurled-artistry" target="_blank">group show at Artistry</a>, titled&nbsp;Unfurled&nbsp;and&nbsp;curated by Christopher E. Harrison, will run February 26 - April 2. Ganu&#39;s DAI show is scheduled for the fall.

Mixing the large and the small, the real and the imagined, Roshan Ganu's artwork connects us to home by way of humor.

The Many Worlds of Roshan Ganu

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Upon asking Shade Pratt what it was that spurred her dive into the life of art and design, the answer at first was pragmatic &mdash; and profound.

&ldquo;I know design isn&rsquo;t going anywhere&hellip; Everything around me, you, from the computer you&rsquo;re typing on to the bench you&rsquo;re sitting on &mdash; has been designed.&rdquo;

For Shade, though, the value of design in her life doesn&rsquo;t solely consist of its practical use-value. To create something you&rsquo;ve never seen before is always a regenerative act.

Born in Maryland and raised in Minnesota, Shade returned east to the University of Maryland where she graduated with a degree melding art, architecture, engineering, and sustainability. Since then, between her world travels as a professional soccer player, Minnesota has always been home &mdash; her most recent stay elongated by the pandemic. As a designer whose visual acumen spans from shoes to murals to illustrations, Pratt says that&nbsp;&ldquo;Art is a part of everything I do.&rdquo; The value in art&rsquo;s omnipresence is that it&rsquo;s freeing for the artist.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjI3NDkwMDAx/full.jpg" />Untitled, acrylic on canvas triptych, each 18&quot; x 36&quot;

In the past few months alone, that same ubiquity has moved Shade Pratt to hone new and long-shelved talents. She tells me she brings her camera everywhere, so when protests started in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, &ldquo;I was out there &mdash; camera in hand &mdash; trying to shed light for everyone who wasn&rsquo;t here [in Minneapolis] on what was really happening.&rdquo;

But, as can be the nature of protest, being on the frontlines took a toll. &ldquo;So I started to paint,&rdquo; she says. By way of bright, dynamic, large scale murals, Pratt tells me how she moved her voice into the visual language of paintings. To be clear, undertaking large&nbsp;scale murals in collaboration with local artists was still a labor, be it of love. They stood long hours under June suns, climbing up and down&nbsp;ladders, paintbrushes in hand. Folks started seeing Shade&rsquo;s work donning the sides of buildings across the city and commissions started coming in. She tells me, &ldquo;I really haven&rsquo;t put down a brush since.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjE5NzUwMDAx/full.jpg" /><img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQ5NjUwMDAx/full.jpg" />The artist at work on her mural, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, at 605 Central Ave NE in Minneapolis.

The pieces that manifest are illustrative and for her, driven by nostalgia and abstraction &mdash; an emphasis placed on negative space. &ldquo;The problem can be knowing when to leave space,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;where to stop&rdquo;.

When I ask about her process and sources that inspire, Shade tells me, &ldquo;Inspiration can come from anywhere,&rdquo; explaining&nbsp;that any moment in a day, every scene within a scene can be the seed for creative thought. Zooming out, Pratt mentions being inspired by transportation, cosmetics, infrastructure, and music colliding with it all. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t just stay in your market.&rdquo;

The line isn&rsquo;t straight, and the field isn&rsquo;t level. She shares that since May, much of her practice takes place within her home. Sometimes pieces are wholly driven aesthetically, and like we all hesitate to admit, content can arrive within a work much, much later.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjUxNDYwMDAx/full.jpg" />At home as much behind an easel as she is&nbsp;out on the pitch, the artist also has a successful career in professional soccer.

Equally significant to her artistic practice and underlying motivation is the fact that Shade Pratt also happens to be a successful professional footballer, usually playing the position of a winger&nbsp;or attacker&nbsp;for multiple teams spanning continents from North America to Asia. Though with the onset of COVID-19 around the world, her training and playing has been placed on a bit of a hold.

What&rsquo;s revealed itself as critical to any discipline of hers, especially that of art-making, is time management, organization, and getting used to not being in one place for long. So whether it be through mural-making for the public or footwear design internships&nbsp;for the likes of Adidas and New Balance, Shade isn&rsquo;t afraid of fluctuation or of shaking things up. With plans to work with an up-and-coming brewery on a new mural, partnering with local businesses expressing a positive message will always be important to her. She shares that, when it comes to the field, her goal is to inspire girls to pursue sports.

When it comes to art, her goal is to speak to the community, better yet the world.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMzNTUwMDAx/full.jpg" />Tumble, acrylic on canvas triptych, each&nbsp;40&quot; x 30&quot;

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For more info and a full portfolio, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://shadepratt.com" target="_blank">shadepratt.com</a>&nbsp;or follow the artist on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/shadepratt/" target="_blank">@shadepratt</a>.

Banner image: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (detail), mural at 605 Central Ave NE&nbsp;in Minneapolis.&nbsp;All images are courtesy of the artist.

The 27-year-old professional soccer player and multidisciplinary artist/designer shares a bit about where she is and how she got there.

Shade Pratt Knows That Design Is What Makes the World Go 'Round

Burn Something is a 7-panel multimedia installation located on the bustling corner of Lake Street and Bloomington Avenue that boasts the visual works of 7 POCI and Black nonbinary, femme, and trans artists. And it has been a long time in the making. The creative brainchild of Emerging Curator Institute fellows Adrienne Doyle and Gabby Coll,&nbsp;Burn Something&rsquo;s imagery is as poignant as the artist statements that line them. Below, Gabby and Adrienne offer insight into their method, mission, and trajectory as it relates to their latest undertaking.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNTMwMDAx/full.jpg" />Installation photo by Adrienne Doyle.

Cameron Downey: Where lies the power in centering the voices of Black and POCI femme, non-binary, and trans-identifying people at this moment in time, at this reckoning?&nbsp;

Gabby Coll: The need to prioritize Black and POCI femme, nonbinary, and trans voices isn&rsquo;t exclusive to the time. Burn Something Zine was founded in 2014 &mdash; almost 7 years ago. This curatorial project was started long before the uprisings of Summer 2020 began. Uplifting traditionally marginalized folks is always urgent. Dismantling white supremacy is always urgent. Now, the social context is serving as a more pronounced backdrop to this work.

So much of this exhibition seemed to manifest itself. There was something happening in the work that allowed for many elements of it to align in ways beyond our control. Take just the name: Burn Something Zine existed long before the uprisings, and now the exhibition that is bringing this work back to life is installed for the public to view on the same street where a few weeks prior, buildings were literally burned during protests against Minneapolis&rsquo;s violent police force.&nbsp;

Another example: during the beginning phases of curating this project, we struggled to find a venue, hesitant to show this work in a white-walled traditional gallery space. When we finally secured a gallery (Modus Locus) our intention was to make it feel intimate and cozy in ways galleries normally don&rsquo;t, in order to make it as accessible as possible.&nbsp;

Now, the exhibition is literally on display for anyone to see, on a prominent corner in Minneapolis &mdash; no white walls to be seen. The choice to install the pieces on boarded-up windows of the Family Partnerships building was one in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, but the overall ethos of this solution aligned well with our intentions and came to fruition pretty quickly &mdash; as if it were meant to be. I think all of this speaks to the timelessness of this essential work.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjM3NTIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Justice Jones, Primary Self-Portrait, pen and acrylic on paper, 2019.

The phrase &ldquo;Burn Something&rdquo; is one that you&rsquo;ve coined and kept around since the start of your zine! How has your understanding of and tie to the connotations of this phrase changed over time? How do you see it changing in the future?

Adrienne Doyle: As a title, &ldquo;Burn Something&rdquo; is representative of the anger that myself and so many others have felt regarding the racist, intangible power structures of this world that cannot be decimated with the immediacy of a match. It is an invitation to ritual: burn that which you must let go and clear space for new growth. It is a social invitation to build relationships: let&rsquo;s kick it and put something in the air. &ldquo;Burn Something&rdquo; is my FUBU offering, exemplifying that BIPOC folks can and already have created solutions to what they feel is missing in their communities. In the context of the MN Uprising, the Burn Something exhibition connects all of the sentiments named above to the literal burning of our city in response to the death of George Floyd. It&rsquo;s been said that there is prescience in the name of this project, but I think the title is just a reflection. Racism has been burning communities of color in Minneapolis for generations.&nbsp;

We&rsquo;re building for the future, now. Curating this exhibition sparked the February 2020 founding of the Burn Something Collective, a group of 7 Black and POCI femme, nonbinary, and trans artists, including Gabby and I, Genevieve DeLeon and Zola Richardson (artists in the exhibition), Nancy Musinguzi and Mare Lodu (past Burn Something Zine contributors), and Lizy Bryant. As a group, we work at the intersection of curation, publishing, and mentorship to offer resources and support the agency of artists in our communities. There are a number of projects in the works for the next year. In a couple weeks we&rsquo;ll be releasing a call for submissions for a new public art installation. Follow the collective on Instagram (<a href="http://instagram.com/burnsomethingzine">@burnsomethingzine</a>) or visit our website (<a href="http://burnsomething.org">burnsomething.org</a>) for updates.&nbsp;

What did the selection process for the Burn Something exhibition look like, given that you had to choose just one image from what were entire issues of work?&nbsp;

AD: Aligned with the accessible, submission-based nature of Burn Something Zine, Gabby and I released a call for submissions for this exhibition in Fall 2019. To select work, we used our artist eligibility criteria (Twin-Cities based, BIPOC, clear tie to themes of the exhibition). Once we selected our artists and announced the exhibition in January 2020, Gabby and I did studio visits with each artist to build relationships, understand more about their respective practices, and work with them to finalize the selected work and decide collaboratively on their work&rsquo;s presentation in the exhibition. Four out of seven of the artists we selected for this exhibition had never shown work before.&nbsp;

GC: It was difficult to transition this exhibition to an outdoor installation. I was nervous to ask the artists to adjust their work and presentation, especially after we had worked so intentionally with them to curate the show around their vision and their own processes. But when we brought up the new format and installation idea, all of them were on board immediately. I am so grateful to all of them for being so flexible and accommodating, and for going along the ride with us with such grace. For this, and so much more, I am grateful to all of them. After that, it was actually quite easy to select the pieces; for many of them, we already had one piece in particular that we had energy and excitement around. It was a bummer to not be able to show all the works we selected from all of them, but in the end I think thematically, visually, aesthetically, all the pieces we selected work really well together and create quite a striking installation.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjMxNjEwMDAx/full.jpg" />Zola Ellen, Untitled&nbsp;(detail), digital photograph, 2020.

Why this location? Why public art now, in this shape and form, when there&rsquo;s been so much &mdash; namely in the adorning of boarded up businesses during the uprisings in May?

GC: A lot of the answer to this question is mere necessity. When COVID shut everything down, we really struggled over what to do for several months. We didn&rsquo;t know if canceling outright or pushing back the exhibition to a later date would be best. Eventually we realized that the pandemic was not going to let up anytime soon, and gathering large groups of folks indoors was not going to be a possible or comfortable option for some time. When we started considering what that meant &mdash; Do we cancel? Do we push to 2021? Do we shift online? &mdash; George Floyd was murdered and the MN Uprising began. We were exhausted &mdash; spiritually, physically, emotionally. Everyone was.&nbsp;

When things had settled a little bit, Adrienne floated the idea of installing the exhibition as a public art installation/mural, and everything just kind of fell into place from there. We got in touch with Tricia Heuring from Studio 400 and Creatives After Curfew and they had a location available. It seemed to be the right fit; the location was right in the community that we want to be interacting with in this work. The work speaks to broader contextual events in a more subtle, oblique way - portraits of George Floyd are wonderful tributes and a symbol for the movement, but I think there are other ways to be in conversation and contribute. After that, it was just logistics, figuring out how to physically install the pieces, get high-res images of the artists&rsquo; work or photograph their work ourselves, writing <a href="https://issuu.com/burnsomething/docs/burn_something_exhibition_catalogue">the exhibition catalogue</a>, etc. (Shout-out to Arts District Image Works for printing such high quality prints in such a short time frame!).

Anything else you want to speak to? What&rsquo;s on your mind? What have you been listening to and watching? What has brought you peace?&nbsp;

AD: I really don&rsquo;t know how any of us are getting out of bed at all. Right now, I&rsquo;m experimenting with screenwriting to tell my stories and make an offering towards more inclusive media representation for folks that look like me. I&#39;ve been revisiting a lot of Frank Ocean&rsquo;s catalogue, watching apocalyptic TV series on Netflix, and thinking about Octavia Butler&rsquo;s Lilith&rsquo;s Brood, wondering what humans must look like to extraterrestrial lifeforms right now. An artist collective was an unfulfilled dream I had while I ran Burn Something Zine, and I&rsquo;m so energized by the founding of the Burn Something Collective and the work we have ahead of us. I have endless gratitude to the local and national contributors that submitted work to Burn Something Zine. Without y&rsquo;all, this project would still be a daydream!&nbsp;

GC: Not much brings me peace these days. I haven&rsquo;t slept soundly since March. Working on this exhibition and on building up the Burn Something Collective are some of the few things that bring me deep joy and calm. I feel so lucky to be surrounded by such brilliant, thoughtful, creative people in this work. Working with Adrienne has been beyond a joy - I am always learning from her. I don&rsquo;t think she fully understands how much! I am forever grateful that she was open to the idea of working together to apply for the ECI in the first place. Lately I&rsquo;ve been watching a lot of Schitt&rsquo;s Creek, and teaching myself Tarot and astrology. The latter are very grounding in this time of immense uncertainty.

<img alt="" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/cdn.mplsart.com/file_container/RmlsZUNvbnRhaW5lch4fMjQzNTIwMDAx/full.jpg" />Photo by Adrienne Doyle.

Burn Something, a public art exhibition presented by the Emerging Curators Institute, is on view now at 1527 East Lake Street in Minneapolis. To learn more, visit <a href="http://burnsomething.org">burnsomething.org</a> or follow them on Instagram <a href="http://instagram.com/burnsomethingzine">@burnsomethingzine</a>.

Banner image: Kieran Myles Andr&eacute;s Tverbakk, missing (detail), digital print, 2019. All images courtesy of Burn Something Collective.

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